COMP 133 - Cryptography |
Fall 2006 |
| Instructor-- | Danny Krizanc |
| Office-- | 631 Science Center |
| Office Hours-- | Tuedays 2:30-4:30 or by appointment |
| Phone-- | 860-685-2186 |
| E-mail-- | dkrizanc at wesleyan dot edu |
| Webpage-- | http://dkrizanc.web.wesleyan.edu/ |
Soon after the development of written communication came the need for secret writing, i.e., cryptography. This course examines the many ways in which people have tried to hide information and secure communication. While historical examples will be discussed, the emphasis will be on the technical means of achieving secrecy. Some topics to be considered:
I ask that each of you purchase The Code Book by Simon Singh available at the bookstore. It's an easy, entertaining read and it mentions most everything that will be covered in the course. If you have a PC running Windows then I highly recommend that you download the The Code Book on CD-ROM . (The lite version is sufficient. Sorry but I'm not sure if any of this material will work under Mac or Linux. A zip file containing all you need to run the lite version is also available here.) For those interested in more in-depth technical knowledge I recommend one of The Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred Menezes, Paul van Oorschot, and Scott Vanstone, Cryptography: Theory and Practice by Douglas Stinson, Modern Cryptography: Theory and Practice by Wenbo Mao, or Practical Cryptography by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier. For an historical perspective, it's just not possible to beat The Codebreakers by David Kahn. Bruce Schneier is a prolific writer on cryptographic issues. I recommend signing up for his monthly newsletter Crypto-gram . The web has lots of material of interest to the class. Here is an arbitrary and growing list of sites of interest:
Ronald L. Rivest Cryptography and Security
The Crypto Drop Box Master Index
NOVA Online Decoding Nazi Secrets
Cryptography Script Table of Contents
Jim Kalb's Palindrome Connection
National Security Agency-Central Security Service (NSA-CSS) -- Site Start Page
Rijndael Animation by Enrique Zabala
Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project
Famous Unsolved Codes and Cipher
Rebecca Mercuri - Electronic Voting
General Purpose Factoring Records
Steganography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Online Hieroglyphics Translator
cockney rhyming slang London slang dictionary
| Report problems to dkrizanc at wesleyan dot edu
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